Austin, TX

Tesla is asked to delay Robotaxi launch in Austin by Texas lawmakers

Published

10 months ago

June 19, 2025

Tesla is asked to delay Robotaxi launch in Austin by Texas lawmakers

Texas lawmakers have officially requested that Tesla delay its planned Robotaxi launch in Austin by a few months due to a new law being implemented.

It’s a Godsend for Elon Musk.

As we previously reported, Tesla’s planned Robotaxi launch in Austin, Texas, now “tentatively” scheduled for June 22, is a moving of the goal post for Tesla.

CEO Elon Musk himself has previously described what Tesla plans to launch as “not really self-driving”, but the CEO is using the new strategy as a way to claim a win in autonomous driving after years of missed deadlines and failed promises.

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Since last year, Musk has discussed launching the service in Austin this summer. For the last few months, he had indicated that it would happen in June, with the June 22nd date being officially shared last week.

For Musk to claim his win, Tesla would need to stick to the deadline, which would be a first for Tesla when it comes to its autonomous driving roadmap.

However, Texas lawmakers have just given Tesla an out.

A group of seven Austin-based lawmakers in the Texas Senate and House have signed a letter asking Tesla to delay its launch until September:

As members of the Austin delegation in the Texas Senate and Texas House of Representatives, we are formally requesting that Tesla delay autonomous robotaxi operations until the new law takes effect on September I, 2025. We believe this is in the best interest of both public safety and building public trust in Tesla’s operations. If Tesla opts to proceed with the June 22, 2025, launch date, we request that you respond to this letter with detailed information demonstrating that Tesla will be compliant with the new law upon the launch of driverless operations in Austin.

Texas has had very few regulations affecting autonomous driving, and the new law maintains this status quo. However, it also introduces requirements for following federal guidelines, and the latest version of the bill references SAE autonomous driving levels.

It doesn’t sound like the lawmakers are forcing Tesla to delay the launch for now. They are more politely asking to delay until the new framework is in place.

here’s the full letter from the Texas lawmakers:

Electrek’s Take

This appears to be a Godsend for Tesla and Musk. Even with the significantly reduced scope of the program compared to what Tesla has promised for years, and the fact that Waymo has been doing exactly what Tesla is trying to accomplish for years, it appears that Tesla is having difficulties delivering on that.

As we previously reported, testing without a safety driver has been extremely limited based on sightings, and it appears that Tesla has simply relocated the “safety driver” to the passenger seat with a kill switch for optics.

Now, Tesla can claim that it has to delay the launch to please the regulators rather than because it is not ready.

There’s also NHTSA, which put a deadline for today for Tesla to answer a bunch of questions about its planned Robotaxi launch in Austin. So, that could also play a role.

Now, let’s see if Tesla takes the out or decides to move forward. For everyone’s sake, I hope they take the out.

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Austin, TX

El Paso family moves into the first in-hospital house in Austin

Published

4 hours ago

April 9, 2026

Press Room

El Paso family moves into the first in-hospital house in Austin

AUSTIN, Texas (KVIA) — A new partnership is helping provide revolutionary care for families as they wait in the hospital.

The Ronald McDonald House in Central Texas and Texas Children’s in Austin opened the first in-hospital Ronald McDonald House in the Central Texas region. The house includes nine family suites, a dining area, a lounge, complimentary laundry facilities, and a room for art and activities. Kitchen volunteers also provide meals.

The house provides a place for families to stay while their children receive care at Texas Children’s Hospital in Austin.

The first family to move into the house is from El Paso. Nathan and Yadira are currently waiting for the arrival of their daughter, Amelia. Yadira is currently nine months pregnant, and is set to give birth this week.

The family learned early in their pregnancy their daughter has omphalocele, a rare condition. It’s a birth defect of the abdominal wall, where intestines stick outside of the belly.

Her parents were referred to Texas Children’s Hospital because of the severity of Amelia’s case. After birth, Amelia will need close monitoring, specialized care, and eventually surgery.

The chief of surgery at Texas Children’s, Dr. Matias Burzoni, is in close contact with the family. He said both parents are still in good spirits.

“They have the best attitude I’ve seen in a long time. They’re extremely optimistic,” he told ABC-7 over a Zoom interview.

Following Amelia’s arrival, she will be receiving treatment at Texas Children’s, and her parents will be just steps away.

Dr. Bunzoni said this opportunity will be a game-changer for many families.

“We can chat with them any time during the day. They can come visit their baby any time during the day. And specifically when there are important decisions to be made, they are readily available,” he said.

He adds, the rooms are warm and welcoming. Meals and lodging are free to families.

“The fact that we have them just a few steps away from their kids makes a big difference. And that’s why I think the Ronald McDonald House is just so powerful because it really improves the outcomes of these babies,” he said.

Yadira and Nathan said they are grateful this place is available to them.

“It means a lot for us to be able to stay here because, you know, it takes away the final financial burden as well as the needs that our daughter will be needing,” Yadira said.

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Austin, TX

Complicating The Myth of Red Texas • The Austin Chronicle

Published

16 hours ago

April 9, 2026

Press Room

Complicating The Myth of Red Texas • The Austin Chronicle

Texas is a land that revels in its idiosyncratic history and associated iconography. On bar signs, brand logos, T-shirts, and tattoo sleeves, the Western-outfitted cowboy and land-roping barbed wire feature heavily. These tangled symbols aren’t easily sorted politically, but when it comes to talking about the Texan past, more often than not, that past is associated with conservative, right-leaning political values.

The resilient trail of leftist ideologies that David Griscom traces through the state’s history in The Myth of Red Texas: Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South aim to trouble that assumption. The author’s debut work doesn’t craft an idealized ancestral politic that left-leaning Texans can saunter on home to, but instead lassos the many worker-led movements that’ve impacted Texas history into a traceable path, complicating simple assumptions about the Lone Star State and its people and crafting a loosely tethered intergenerational community of Texas radicals.

In his pages, Griscom attempts to reassociate cowboy individualism with cowboy solidarity in the strikes of late 1800s, and the rural, tough-living pride of said barbed wire with property-hungry landowners that strangled the open range, despite resistance from fence-cutting cowpokes, farmers, and neighbors.

Following these fence-cutters through the populist movement, labor unions, and socialists, Griscom drops in on different casts of characters each cut in the rugged shape of Texas who face variations of the same struggle. Though they differ in ideology and approach, these charismatic speakers and movement leaders grapple with the same temptations of political power and infighting. Griscom does not shy away from interrogating the pitfalls of these movements – particularly the racism and misogyny that manage to transcend solidarity more often than not – and the backstabbing dance of courting imagined moderates in a plea for reelection. The Brotherhood of Timber Workers and some German socialists prove to be exceptions to these common drawbacks, Griscom reveals.

The author’s debut work doesn’t craft an idealized ancestral politic that left-leaning Texans can saunter on home to, but instead lassos the many worker-led movements that’ve impacted Texas history into a traceable path.

As staunchly as conservatives want to turn the wagon around, liberals can fix their eyes on the horizon too closely. In an introductory analysis of recent Democratic defeats in Texas, the writer argues that colloquial assumptions about history deeply impact contemporary campaigns and grassroots organizing. No modern movement is reinventing the wheel, and moving forward with a knowledge of the successes and missteps that came before could embolden today’s organizers. As Texas once led the country in socialist party sign-ups, the Houston chapter remains the organization’s largest branch and, as Griscom notes, the Texas AFL-CIO was the first statewide labor association to advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza. The legacy of collective movements and outspoken groups persists in Texas, even when the overarching narrative doesn’t celebrate them.

Unique though it may be, Texas is also something of a microcosm, a laboratory, and a weather beacon for the politics and culture that ripple throughout the United States – a fact that Griscom, a writer and podcaster for Jacobin and host of Left Reckoning, knows well. A return to the past has been the great call of the political right in America for the past decade, and its leaders have revised and reshaped that past to suit their current intentions. As Griscom writes, recalling Texas’ rich and undertaught liberalist history makes it “difficult for the GOP to remake the state in its own image completely.” As Texas leads the country in enacting conservative policies in education, reproductive rights, and voting legislation, it stands to reason that muddying its narrative can remind other states to look backward for ideas in imagining a radical future.

Griscom is clear-eyed in his introduction about this 177-page primer being a cursory introduction to the history of leftist movements in Texas, much less the history of Texas politics as a whole. But for those who have felt excluded by the mythologizing of Texas’ past, it serves as a galvanizing read for further education and collective action.

The Myth of Red Texas: Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South

By David Griscom

OR Books

This article appears in April 10 • 2026.

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Austin, TX

13 Texas cities where people are the most delinquent on debt

Published

1 day ago

April 8, 2026

Press Room

13 Texas cities where people are the most delinquent on debt

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Thirteen Texas cities were listed as the most delinquent on debt in the United States.

Financial resource outlet WalletHub recently compared proprietary user data in the 100 largest U.S. cities to find where people were having the most difficulty paying their bills.

“Being delinquent on debt payments can cause a lot of harm to your credit score, and late payments will remain on your credit report for seven years,” WalletHub said. “People who are delinquent on any debt should try to get current as quickly as possible in order to minimize credit score damage and avoid other consequences like additional late fees, closed accounts, or lawsuits.”

The data showed the Texas city that struggled the most was Laredo, which ranked No. 8 nationally. Laredo had a total score of 72.52 out of 100, with 18.31% of people being loan balance delinquent in Q4 of 2025.

“People in some cities will have a much harder time catching up on delinquent debt payments than others, though,” WalletHub said.

Nationally, the No. 1 city with the most delinquent debt was Detroit, Michigan, which had residents delinquent on 15.7% of all their loans and lines of credit. Detroit residents were also delinquent on 20.2% of their entire debt, according to the study’s data.